Pulp Decameron

A few months ago, I started receiving random emails from someone who was clearly paranoid schizophrenic. Over the course of a few days, I got nearly 150 messages from this person. They were disjointed and confused, made allegations of mistreatment at the hands of various establishments and people, and eventually contained death threats against named people. Concerned, I called the police in the city the author was writing from. They referred me to the police department of the university the people being threatened attended. The university police tried to refer me back to the city police. Eventually, I filed a report with the university police at the university where I work. They wouldn’t do anything but take a report, since I wasn’t the one being threatened, but they did take my report and a copy of the emails.

Given how little anyone cared about a legitimately crazy person making death threats, I was surprised this morning to read the story of a University of Florida grad student being hassled by his university police for having written a short story from the point of view of a stalker and murderer. I’d contact the UFL University Relations office to see if they’ve got a prepared statement about this incident, but the only contact information I can find is a phone number, and it’s a little late to be calling Florida. Maybe tomorrow.

I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that police in Florida are badgering a writer for fingerprints and DNA samples on the “evidence” of one short story, given that this is the same state where a comic creator was convicted of obscenity, treated as if he were a child molester, and barred from creating or possessing any further material which could be considered obscene. And yet, I am. Surprised, that is.

Inappropriate behavior on the part of the police aside, the Wikipedia infighting exposed by the story is fascinating. It’s pretty clear that the grad student was reported to the police by a rival faction of wikipedia contributors as retaliation for something, and their claims now that, no, it was only concern for an unsolved murder, not any sort of retaliation are laughable. I’m beginning to wonder now if the user “Hushthis” with whom I’ve been arguing (starting here) is crazy, or just willfully ignorant, or what. I should probably stop posting in that thread, but I really do find it fascinating, the twisting Hushthis is having to do to justify his position.

7 thoughts on “Pulp Decameron”

I look forward to hearing what the University’s position on this turns out to be. In particular, I’d like to know if they still claim, against the testimony of one of U. Florida’s professors, that the police didn’t demand fingerprints. I hope there’s enough pressure on the University that it has to get its story straight. I’d like to see a formal apology to Mr. Sandifer. Not that I’m holding my breath.

If one good thing has come of this, it’s that it reminded me to finally get around to donating some money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. (And I’m getting a nice poster, too.)

To me, the most outrageous part of the Diana decision is that he was, if I understand correctly, prohibited from drawing dirty pictures even for his own private amusement.

As for Hushthis, he certainly gives every impression in that thread of being at least mildly schizoaffective. I thought about bothering with that thread, but eh — as a wise acquaintance of mine says, “Don’t stick your hand in the crazy.” (She also says, “It doesn’t take all kinds, but we’ve got them anyway,” which also applies.)

I see now that Hushthis has removed most of his posts from wikipedia review, at least in the recent threads. It’s not worth asking him about it there, but what’s the phrase that I keep thinking of? “If you don’t have anything to hide, what are you worried about?” Something like that. Sandifer refuses to give the police DNA samples, and Hushthis deletes a bunch of his posts. Sounds like they have something in common after all.

Na, completely different reason. As he’s in the moderator group (as a result of being the monitor for irrelevant news entries in the ‘Wikipedia in the Media’ subforum) he got the warning sent to Amorrow… The thing is, he didn’t realise it was meant for amorrow, and thought we were warning him that he was way over the line and may get banned if he doesn’t clear up his act etc.. quite funny really